That sounds like an excuse the ISP would use for not building any new lanes and turning the existing lanes into the "fast" lanes.
The optimal solution short of declaring broadband ISPs as common carriers is to make it less expensive to use the Internet during quiet periods than during peak usage periods. This would create the proper incentive for people to shift their heavy usage to those times when fewer people in the neighborhood need to get online, and the profit motive would encourage ISPs to increase their bandwidth so that people use more of it during the expensive busy period.
Oh wait, Comcast never lowered their prices, but Netflix got more expensive.
Where has it actually happened that young professionals competing for lower income housing caused a net exodus of poor people? Do those neighborhoods have restrictions on density?
Let's give everyone free McDonald's hamburgers. Let's put 10,000 hamburgers a day on a table in front of the Capitol (or wherever).
What would happen? People would take and eat the hamburgers, and once word got out, all 10,000 hamburgers would be taken very quickly every day. We may thus infer that because people need food and they really seemed to like those burgers, McDonald's hamburgers are an important public good.
A city planner might notice a problem: those 10,000 hamburgers just aren't enough. They get taken very early in the morning, so not everybody has a chance to get a hamburger. The obvious solution -- because burgers are a highly-valued public good -- is to provide more free burgers. So the city planner starts to provide 20,000 hamburgers a day.
You can see where this is going. People start going out of their way to get the free hamburgers, and planning their day around that trip. The city has to keep providing more and more free burgers -- eventually millions a day -- to keep satisfying the demand for free hamburgers. The competing food markets crater, because who would pay $2/lb for apples when you can get as many free burgers as you want (although maybe you have to wait in a 30-minute line). Public health goes to hell, because everybody's eating six burgers a day. And yet, everybody likes their free burgers and the Hamburger Department is an untouchable political powerhouse. Proposals for a 10-cent hamburger fee to cover the huge costs of hamburger provision get shot down by public outrage.
What's the problem here? The problem is that food is indeed a necessity, and yes, people seem to like McDonald's hamburgers -- but the fact that people will take free burgers does not prove that they are "highly valued" by the market. We are not seeing actual demand for burgers. We are seeing induced demand for a good which is being provided at artificially low prices.
But for some reason, replace hamburgers with roads and everybody goes nuts.
In short, the fact that a new lane or road immediately fills up with traffic does not "prove" that there was a high demand for that road -- it proves that people will use way too much of something that's free.
So making the road wider won't make traffic on the freeway flow better in the long run. On the other hand, express tolls (because they are priced at market equilibrium) permanently eliminate traffic congestion, at negative cost to the owners of the road (usually taxpayers) without overcharging anyone (except the types who complain of being overcharged whenever they win an eBay auction). Permanently eliminating traffic congestion and lowering our tax burden are both good things, right?
My question is, will Internet subscribers who don't need Netflix get the opportunity to lower their costs by refusing to pay for the "fast lane"? We all want a la carte cable, don't we?
The alternative would likely be an increase in income taxes which would likely be progressive and come directly out of his pocket. A gas tax is applied to everyone equally based on their gasoline use.
A better alternative is to replace transportation sales taxes, which are regressive, with variable express tolls, which permanently eliminate traffic congestion at a much, much lower cost to taxpayers than constantly trying to build your way out of congestion.
If you toot the horn in hopes they might consider pulling over and letting the dozen or so cars pass, you again just get the finger...
That's because, by using your horn for a reason other than to warn of danger, you broke the law. Being vulnerable road users, bicyclists need motorists to obey the law.
If you don't want bicyclists to delay motor traffic, give them a good alternative, such as a bike lane free of clutter and parked cars. Or if it's true that there were a dozen cars waiting to pass and not just five or fewer, the bicyclists broke the law if they didn't pull over at a safe place to let traffic pass.
Information on where a parking space is about to open up? If the one who is about to make that space available doesn't own the information, then who does?
This is a person taking a common public resource and only making it available for the wealthy.
That's what the wealthy want you to believe, to try to justify the use of (regressive) sales tax revenue to pay for public resources instead of user fees. They want poor people who don't own cars to help pay for parking spaces that will be occupied by the middle and upper classes. So the argument that charging fair market prices will hurt the poor is just an excuse by wealthy people to hurt the poor. That's ironic if not hypocritical.
Meanwhile, the poor who own cars will still pay to park, just not as frequently, and they'll vacate their space as soon as it's no longer needed. As it is now, free first-come-first-served parking spaces tend to get filled up early and then hoarded all day, like the Park 'n' Ride spot near my home. Pricing these public resources below market equilibrium artificially limits the number of people who benefit from them, and this goes against the government's responsibility of providing the greatest benefit for the greatest possible number of people.
"Adequate parking" means different things to different people. To city planners, it means such an overabundance that there's never a shortage when the price is zero. To a developer, it means the amount where the marginal cost of adding another space (MC) equals the marginal revenue it would bring (MR), which is usually less than what the city planner would require.
If the goal is to maximize tax revenue per acre while minimizing tax rates, or minimize a property's burden on the roads and streets, or minimize CO2 emissions, MR=MC is superior. If the goal is to prevent parking shortages, both strategies are equal, as long as parking is never priced below market equilibrium, but that's never a good long term strategy anyway. Therefore, there's no need to "provide adequate parking" on the city planner's terms.
Most [plans] are just variations on "lets tack on a bunch of fines and taxes to make doing certain things unpopular". Which doesn't ACTUALLY address the problem.
False, because demand for energy isn't perfectly inelastic.
Not to mention the fact that we STILL don't have a computer simulation that ACCURATELY models the phenomenon.
How accurate do they need to be in order to be useful? How many nines? 4? 5? 6?
On top of that, everyone in the US could stop producing greenhouse gasses RIGHT NOW, and it wouldn't do a damn thing. Because everyone else is still putting the stuff out. SPECIFICALLY China.
If you want folk's power cutting off at the whim of outside forces, or time based pricing, then there are easier and less costly ways to accomplish that.
A clear misunderstanding of what smart meters are capable of. Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) allows prices to vary with current market conditions (supply and demand), not just the time of day, and allows thermostats and smart devices to be controlled by demand response events.
The ISPs aren't creating "slow lanes." They're simply refusing to widen the freeway until they're paid to do so. It's like a multiple-item auction seller who, in order to increase the auction price, refuses to make more items available in the auction.
Is a bicyclist obstructing anyone if cars can change lanes to pass?
In the USA, if five or more vehicles are formed in line behind a slow moving vehicle, that slow moving vehicle is required to pull over when it is safe and allow traffic to pass.
If you were stopped to let a bicyclist pass on the right, it suggests you were about to turn right, and that you hadn't properly merged into the bike lane as you are legally required in the USA outside of Oregon. A safe bicyclist knows that it's unsafe to pass on the right.
does net metering really raise the electric rates for seniors?
Net metering allows people to offset the amount of electricity they consume. But as long as the cost of connecting to the grid is rolled into electricity rates, net metering subsidizes the connection cost, which means somebody else (those who don't net meter) pays the difference. So yes, net metering in this case really raises electrical rates for seniors.
I wouldn't worry too much about the people who put solar panels on their roof, because they're wealthy (correct?), and because if they don't want to pay the grid connection fee, they can either put up another panel to offset that cost or they can disconnect from the grid altogether.
But that's not the end of the story. Rolling the cost of connecting to the grid into electricity rates eliminates the proper incentive to get roommates in order to share the grid connection fee and lower one's environmental footprint. So this kind of pricing takes away an opportunity for those on fixed incomes to save money and live a little more green.
So the Koch brothers have a point, but that's only half the story. The other half involves negative externalities, but Republicans don't believe in those.
Baseload is not covered by existing solar. We need new storage technology (that's what's holding me back).
We don't need much storage. We only need enough to keep the wires energized, plus a little extra to sell to consumers. As long as that little extra is always sold at the market equilibrium rate (and why shouldn't it be?), there will be no blackouts or brownouts.
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The optimal solution short of declaring broadband ISPs as common carriers is to make it less expensive to use the Internet during quiet periods than during peak usage periods. This would create the proper incentive for people to shift their heavy usage to those times when fewer people in the neighborhood need to get online, and the profit motive would encourage ISPs to increase their bandwidth so that people use more of it during the expensive busy period.
Yes, inflation is a real pain.
Where has it actually happened that young professionals competing for lower income housing caused a net exodus of poor people? Do those neighborhoods have restrictions on density?
Here's another parable: the hamburger analogy:
So making the road wider won't make traffic on the freeway flow better in the long run. On the other hand, express tolls (because they are priced at market equilibrium) permanently eliminate traffic congestion, at negative cost to the owners of the road (usually taxpayers) without overcharging anyone (except the types who complain of being overcharged whenever they win an eBay auction). Permanently eliminating traffic congestion and lowering our tax burden are both good things, right?
My question is, will Internet subscribers who don't need Netflix get the opportunity to lower their costs by refusing to pay for the "fast lane"? We all want a la carte cable, don't we?
A better alternative is to replace transportation sales taxes, which are regressive, with variable express tolls, which permanently eliminate traffic congestion at a much, much lower cost to taxpayers than constantly trying to build your way out of congestion.
That's because, by using your horn for a reason other than to warn of danger, you broke the law. Being vulnerable road users, bicyclists need motorists to obey the law.
If you don't want bicyclists to delay motor traffic, give them a good alternative, such as a bike lane free of clutter and parked cars. Or if it's true that there were a dozen cars waiting to pass and not just five or fewer, the bicyclists broke the law if they didn't pull over at a safe place to let traffic pass.
Unless, of course, the cities massively subsidize the suburbs. Then all bets are off.
Information on where a parking space is about to open up? If the one who is about to make that space available doesn't own the information, then who does?
That's what the wealthy want you to believe, to try to justify the use of (regressive) sales tax revenue to pay for public resources instead of user fees. They want poor people who don't own cars to help pay for parking spaces that will be occupied by the middle and upper classes. So the argument that charging fair market prices will hurt the poor is just an excuse by wealthy people to hurt the poor. That's ironic if not hypocritical.
Meanwhile, the poor who own cars will still pay to park, just not as frequently, and they'll vacate their space as soon as it's no longer needed. As it is now, free first-come-first-served parking spaces tend to get filled up early and then hoarded all day, like the Park 'n' Ride spot near my home. Pricing these public resources below market equilibrium artificially limits the number of people who benefit from them, and this goes against the government's responsibility of providing the greatest benefit for the greatest possible number of people.
"Adequate parking" means different things to different people. To city planners, it means such an overabundance that there's never a shortage when the price is zero. To a developer, it means the amount where the marginal cost of adding another space (MC) equals the marginal revenue it would bring (MR), which is usually less than what the city planner would require.
If the goal is to maximize tax revenue per acre while minimizing tax rates, or minimize a property's burden on the roads and streets, or minimize CO2 emissions, MR=MC is superior. If the goal is to prevent parking shortages, both strategies are equal, as long as parking is never priced below market equilibrium, but that's never a good long term strategy anyway. Therefore, there's no need to "provide adequate parking" on the city planner's terms.
"Programmed to cause an accident" is self-contradictory. The crash would be intentional, not arising from extrinsic causes.
False, because demand for energy isn't perfectly inelastic.
How accurate do they need to be in order to be useful? How many nines? 4? 5? 6?
Why can't we be leaders?
Conveniently, a lot of energy is stored in that gaseous water which could be converted back into electricity.
Why would a distillation plant pay residential rates?
In 2012, California received 88 cents in federal spending for every dollar paid in federal taxes. If the state were greedy, that number would be over a dollar.
Idiots? Probably. Greedy? Probably not.
Perfect price inelasticity of demand doesn't exist in real life, not even for food.
A clear misunderstanding of what smart meters are capable of. Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) allows prices to vary with current market conditions (supply and demand), not just the time of day, and allows thermostats and smart devices to be controlled by demand response events.
How much would electricity cost in the USA without energy subsidies and with the negative externalities corrected?
Because they haven't yet embraced smart meters.
The ISPs aren't creating "slow lanes." They're simply refusing to widen the freeway until they're paid to do so. It's like a multiple-item auction seller who, in order to increase the auction price, refuses to make more items available in the auction.
Yes, they were.
...will be 25 cents.
That hook turn looks very unsafe.
Is a bicyclist obstructing anyone if cars can change lanes to pass?
In the USA, if five or more vehicles are formed in line behind a slow moving vehicle, that slow moving vehicle is required to pull over when it is safe and allow traffic to pass.
If you were stopped to let a bicyclist pass on the right, it suggests you were about to turn right, and that you hadn't properly merged into the bike lane as you are legally required in the USA outside of Oregon. A safe bicyclist knows that it's unsafe to pass on the right.
What if there's no bike lane, or it's filled with debris, or the bicyclist needs to make a left turn?
...our children and grandchildren would wonder why we ever allowed humans to operate motor vehicles on public roads.
With electricity generated by the nuclear reactor, of course! Come on, that wasn't even hard.
Net metering allows people to offset the amount of electricity they consume. But as long as the cost of connecting to the grid is rolled into electricity rates, net metering subsidizes the connection cost, which means somebody else (those who don't net meter) pays the difference. So yes, net metering in this case really raises electrical rates for seniors.
I wouldn't worry too much about the people who put solar panels on their roof, because they're wealthy (correct?), and because if they don't want to pay the grid connection fee, they can either put up another panel to offset that cost or they can disconnect from the grid altogether.
But that's not the end of the story. Rolling the cost of connecting to the grid into electricity rates eliminates the proper incentive to get roommates in order to share the grid connection fee and lower one's environmental footprint. So this kind of pricing takes away an opportunity for those on fixed incomes to save money and live a little more green.
So the Koch brothers have a point, but that's only half the story. The other half involves negative externalities, but Republicans don't believe in those.
We don't need much storage. We only need enough to keep the wires energized, plus a little extra to sell to consumers. As long as that little extra is always sold at the market equilibrium rate (and why shouldn't it be?), there will be no blackouts or brownouts.